Martin Buber (1878 – 1965)
Jewish philosopher, theologian, story-teller, and teacher.
Solitude is the place of purification.
The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.
Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning — we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.
Next to being the children of God our greatest privilege is being the brothers of each other.
The ones who count are those persons who— though they may be of little renown— respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.
God is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history.
I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.
The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes.
Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.
Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.
You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.
How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you— for that is the meaning of your life.
So long as you “have” yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.
Success is not one of the names of God.
The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.
The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine.
The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.
The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: … the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.